


Mit Dir

by VoluptuousPanic



Category: Babylon Berlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drugs, F/M, Infidelity, It'll End in Tears - Freeform, Make Outs, Petite Gap Fill, Plot? What Plot?, Prequel, Sexy Eye Bags, Speculation, Weimar Republic Obsessions, nightclubbing, real talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 06:24:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19997326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VoluptuousPanic/pseuds/VoluptuousPanic
Summary: A vignette prequel to "Love Will Tear Us Apart Again," but not a chapter. Charlotte's side, featuring real talk with Reinhold Gräf: 2:08 / 1:16 gap fill + later. A difficult conversation divided by some (very, very) necessary interaction. Charlotte is guarded. Getting into her head is hard.





	Mit Dir

Though Charlotte saw Gräf at the station almost every day, seeing him away from Holländer or the Eldorado was still confusing. In the confines of the Castle, he was an almost nervous presence, shambling in and out of the darkroom, hands aflutter, in and out of crime scenes with camera and accessories. At night, where she knew him first, Gräf was a different creature, the one he chose to be, or actually was—an outsize vision in red, but serene and divinely maternal. At night he was himself, someone Charlotte liked very much, a creature she was always pleased to see. That shambling Assistentkommissar Reinhold Gräf had come to see her again in hospital, this time bearing a cheerful little bouquet of violets in a tiny milk glass vase, and had waited for her to wake almost brought Charlotte to happy tears. 

“I miss Stephan,” Charlotte confessed by way of hello, her voice small and weak, but enough to rouse Gräf, who had nodded off in the sunlight beside her bed. 

Gräf smiled and moved his chair closer. He patted Charlotte’s hand, his large but graceful paw almost engulfing it. “I do too,” he answered easily, his full lips pulling into a sad, lop-sided smile that made Charlotte smile too. “But I’m glad that he wasn’t here to see all of this happen,” Gräf said. “It would have been too much for him.”

Charlotte felt her face screw into a question as she sat up in bed. “What would? I’m fine. Now.” Though her chest still hurt, she was perfectly fine, better than fine after twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep, in clean sheets, alone in a clean ward. They were to send her home tomorrow. She missed Stephan terribly. His sweet ways, his sweet face, how his attention made her forget the way things usually were. Before he was killed, she had sometimes considered a possibility wherein she could be just a girl, Stephan just a boy. But her circumstances didn’t allow for that, and Stephan was too sweet and too gentle to ever understand why. But Stephan hadn’t been entirely naive.

Gräf cleared his throat and redirected. “Lotte. The way—Kommissar Rath…”

_“Trägst du mich zurück in die Stadt?” How silly she’d been so speak to him in that way, to let him hear it. Du. “Natürlich.” The steady motion of their bodies, her gaze fixed on the place where his sharp jaw met his neck, her hand in the narrow space between his shoulder blades, his warmth, though they both shivered. “Kannst du aufstehen?” he asked and she nodded weakly. Du, again. It was just for a moment, to let him breathe, to rest, and they stood together in the road folded together like lovers, closer than they’d ever been, his small body still taking the burden of hers. He was small. She usually didn’t notice. His arms wound tight around her, but she couldn’t remember how it felt, only that she was cold, that they both smelled of wet wool, and that her fingers gripped the strap of his holster and the armscye of his waistcoat under his arm where he was so warm. She wanted to put her face there and sleep. “Bist du bereit?” Du. “Ich kann jetszt gehen.” “Zurück in die Stadt?” A fragile exhale of laughter, in his arms in earnest, a tight squeeze, his hand hard on her head before he touched her cheek. She couldn’t look at him, but consented to being lifted again. As easy as dancing.“Auf geht’s.” And then Gräf was there, with the car, with Henning and Czerwinski._

“He has a name,” she said. She looked down at the clean blanket. At the clean broadcloth gown she wore. Gereon. She knew he was in hospital too, but not at Bethanien. 

“Ger—it feels strange to say it, Lotte,” Gräf said gently. “The way Kommissar Rath saw to you. He asked me to take care of you. He didn’t have to ask.” 

Wondering what Stephan would have made of the last few days was pointless as they wouldn’t have happened. Stephan would have revealed all, would have led the investigation under Gereon’s direction, would have been recognized, been congratulated or promoted. That would have left only Bruno, and Bruno was always the problem. Perhaps, ultimately, things would have turned out the same way for Stephan, or perhaps Stephan would have drowned. Or perhaps Gereon. When Stephan was killed, everything changed. 

Gräf squeezed Charlotte’s hand. She squeezed back. He smiled and gave an ebullient little chuckle that eased her and cut through the melancholia. “Stephan liked you so much.”

“I liked Stephan.” Charlotte was sure of that too. She smiled and shook her head at the sweetness of that afternoon in the sun when things had been so much simpler: Stephan, Rudi. Greta. Fritz and Otto. Like _Menschen am Sonntag_. Had Gereon ever been to Schlachtensee? Had he ever been young? He was young too. So was Gräf. It was something she kept forgetting. 

“You liked Stephan casually,” Gräf chided, still smiling. 

“We all did,” Charlotte said. Stephan had deserved to be loved, wholly, which was more than she could have offered at the time. It had to be forgiven, as it was far too late for a do-over, and knowing what she knew now, Charlotte didn’t think she would change a thing. 

“I liked both of you more than casually,” Gräf said gently.

His admission made Charlotte’s breath come short with guilt, a thud of her heart come suddenly. She looked at him. At his strange, gentle face and ungainliness. She noticed then that his hair was cut beautifully and that his eyeteeth were crooked. She’d never considered that there was more to Gräf’s kindness at the Castle and elsewhere than the love he seemed to share for everyone. She also supposed that was the trouble with being a lovely sort of man who wasn’t an overt 175er by the light of day and operated far above the line-boy and bube trade that was the staple of the places they both went at night. 

Gräf’s open smile showed that all was forgiven, though Charlotte suspected he, like Stephan, knew more of forgiving others’ shortcomings than he did of being loved. “The burdens of loving both sexes equally while being a transvestite. I imagine that I should be quite popular with Dr. Hirschfeld,” he said lightly, then was serious again. “Stephan would have done anything for you, and you would have broken his heart.”

It was true. “I know. He and his family were good to me.” 

Gräf sighed, and came closer, releasing her hand to lean an elbow on the bed. “Lotte,” he said gently, his eyes open wide. “Stephan’s heart would have been broken and you’d have had to much to drink and you’d have both laughed it off and gone about your business. For all I know, you may have. Be careful with Rath. Rath is…it’s all over his face. And yours, Lotte.”

Charlotte’s heart thudded again, for different reasons. 

_Trägst du mich zurück in die Stadt? Du. Mich und dich. Mond und Sonne. His hands cupping her face, the urgent warmth of his breath into her mouth. His felt soft, and their tongues had touched and she had to close her eyes as if it was a kiss, just a kiss. It wasn’t a kiss, but it should have been, at a different time or a different place. Through the terror, as she stopped fighting and let the water come into her lungs, she considered that kissing him would be the last thing she would ever do. She was at peace, beyond momentary rage at the futility of ever wanting anything. The terror was his. She knew that as surely as she knew she never wanted to drown again, or have a broken sternum._

“He’s a good man, Lotte, but old fashioned for someone so young. As much as he doesn’t want to believe, but he is. He saved you and brought you back to us. That counts for something with a man like him.” 

Grief’s sweet smile told Charlotte that he’d been spared the details of her saving, that he knew only that she’d nearly drowned. Charlotte laughed outright then and ruffled Gräf’s hair. 

“Saint Gereon has saved Princess Charlotte. Next you’ll tell me you think he’s handsome. Oh Reini, I do love you! Don’t ever doubt that.”

“He is. And rather dashing.” Gräf sighed with theatrical wistfulness, and offered a slightly sad, awkward smile. He kissed her hand and squeezed it again. “He also seems to be a fine dancer. I’d never seen you look so happy as that night at Holländer, with this new man that we knew nothing about. A Kommissar taking you dancing. At Holländer! He was the freshest thing in the room. I’d never seen you like that, even with Stephan or his friend, that…”

“Rudi, ugh.” Charlotte waved her free hand. “They’d have never come to Holländer! Gereon wouldn’t have if I’d told him.” She giggled, then met Gräf’s eyes. “He is a fine dancer. And a gentleman.” Gereon was the best partner she’d ever had—or the best partner she’d had amongst men who liked women—and she wondered briefly that night what it would be like to take him to bed. In the crush of bodies when the music was loud, she trusted his lead. At the Castle, Gereon was less direct, but now she had reason to trust him there too.

_Natürlich._

“Rath is a lamb come to slaughter in Berlin and hasn’t the slightest.” Gräf’s voice was quiet, and gravely serious. 

****

What did Charlotte want from Gereon? Until it happened, she hadn’t known, beyond wanting him to say something, to do something, to make the move that she couldn’t, to just touch her again. She still didn’t know. The earlier moments played back. In Friedrichstraße, why hadn’t she said “So, sweetheart?” That old Tauentzienstraße opening gambit that he would have known, at least by reputation? On the floor in his office, why hadn’t she reached for him to take the kiss that hung between them? She wished she had taken the kiss, and sometimes thought that if she had, it would have been the hinge on which their lives turned. Perhaps if it had happened, the kiss that wasn’t a kiss when he brought her back from the dark, wouldn’t have. That in not doing it, she’d somehow saved Gereon from something. Or saved herself, possibly from him. But to have had that kiss. 

Charlotte looked up from a case file to find Gereon standing there, at her desk, his huge eyes full of something unsaid. But before he muttered goodnight or revealed that he’d be back soon or some other irrelevancy when he had a perfectly competent secretary—who Charlotte quite liked—by day and a department duty sergeant by night, Charlotte closed the distance and took his hand. What was left was only to take Gereon somewhere they could be alone together. She had allowed herself that fantasy. But only sometimes, and it was rarely navigable to the logical conclusion of reckless rutting, but rather derailed into a vision of holding him close afterwards, letting him find peace in her arms. 

“It’s late,” he said. Gereon’s eyes were on their hands. 

Charlotte’s eyes were on his face. There was nothing expectant in his gaze and she was almost gutted with the notion that she’d done precisely the wrong thing, until his eyes met hers and she felt his thumb move over her knuckles, his hand tightening around her fingers. He wore a gentle expression that wasn’t quite a smile, melancholy without being particularly sad. As of late, he’d been simply tender with her, and she’d seen it often. It made her want to ask questions that she knew she couldn’t. What was the matter? What had she done or not done? _Was tut weh?_

“It’s terrible out. Let me drive you home,” Gereon said, his voice almost a whisper in the evening quiet.

Charlotte noticed then that he’d been out already and come back. His hat and coat were wet. She noticed too, that he held himself stiffly, as if he were nervous. As if he’d stood outside the Castle and run through the particulars of whether he should return, or if he’d decided simply to do without overthinking and wasn’t entirely sure how he found himself here. Charlotte nodded in thanks and rose from her chair, refusing to break eye contact with him for fear it would slip away. His hand slipped from hers, but she watched him as he switched off the lamp on her desk and stepped to the the bentwood hall tree for her coat. He helped her into it as if it were something on the regular. She pulled on her knitted hat and slung her bag over her forearm. Gereon held the door. 

Outside the Castle the lights of Alexanderplatz were visible only a hazy glow through the sheets of rain that moved with the wind. They ran together until they reached a Buick parked at an angle on Dircksenstraße near the new U-Bahn entrance. When had Gereon gotten a car? Charlotte had expected a green Opel from the motorpool. He opened the driver’s side door for her and she slid across the bench seat with him following. He slammed the door, took off his hat and spun it into the backseat.

Charlotte removed her sodden hat and deposited it on the floorboard with her bag. It needed to be washed and reblocked, and she was past caring, and past the need to wear homespun when she could buy new. Her coat was filthy as well. She wriggled out of it and watched Gereon struggle with his. Then she looked at him. They were both soaked to the skin, as wet as they’d been weeks before, only now she felt a rush of laughter. “Can’t you take me anywhere dry?” she asked and laughed outright.

Gereon shook his head, then looked down at his hands. A smile flickered across his face, then a grin. Impulsively, Charlotte touched him again, reaching out to slide her hand through his wet hair, to push it back off his forehead. She felt a surge of butterflies and desire that was vaguely nauseating. As Gereon’s eyes closed, he gave a shuddering sigh as if he’d been waiting for her touch. He turned to her then, and she opened her arms to him, overtaken by his closeness. She stroked his head and the nape of his neck as if he were a child. Soothing a grown man wasn’t so different. There was nothing to say, and the rain came down so hard anything of importance would be lost. For a long while they sat folded together, sheltered from the rain and safe with each other. 

“I should get you home,” Gereon said, his breath warm against her neck. He pulled away slowly with what felt to Charlotte like reluctance and searched his trouser pocket. He fitted the key to the ignition and turned over the starter switch and the car began to idle. He looked at her again, but made no move to settle behind the wheel or put the car into gear. 

Cautiously, Charlotte moved closer. She touched his cheek, and he turned his face into her hand, turned his body toward hers again, placed a kiss in her palm that made her shiver. She touched his lips, her face hovering near his. Gereon offered an almost imperceptible nod, and then she pressed a soft, lingering kiss to his lips. Then another when she felt his lips part and the warmth of his mouth. He responded gently, tentatively, opening to her and letting her take the lead. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d kissed someone so softly or so slowly, or been so tender with someone, least of all a man. Charlotte took the kiss they should have had months before, the kiss that should have been when Gereon breathed into her. It was soft and uncertain, each touch of their tongues a new question, the answer to each a shy affirmative. 

At some point the rain stopped, and Charlotte realized that over the smooth hum of the engine, she could hear Gereon breathe, hear the soft sounds their mouths made together, the rustle of their clothing as they touched each other. She could smell his skin, Kölnish Wasser, Ballistol, and gasoline. Charlotte grew bolder, her kiss deeper, her tongue sweeping into his mouth to move firmly against his as she unbuttoned his waistcoat to stroke his neck and chest. His heart hammered against her palm. Gereon turned his face away for a moment, breathing hard, his forehead resting against hers. He returned in earnest, his mouth urgent, though he remained unhurried. Would he be the same if she took him to bed? She drew her hand through his hair again and rose impulsively to climb into his lap, her legs opening over his hips. Gereon broke the kiss and looked up at her, dumbfounded and panting, one hand gentle at her throat, the other greedily gripping her backside. Looking into his eyes, or as near as she could in the dark, she ground against his erection, feeling him strong and hard through his trousers, through hers. He responded, rising against her, breathing open mouthed. She kissed him again, moving slowly against him, with him, until he stopped her suddenly, his breath drawing short as he pulled back from her, hands on her hips to still the motion. 

“Lotte,” he whispered against her lips. 

“Gereon? Wirst du kommen?” Charlotte asked with wonder as their bodies settled again. A smile stole across her face, though she didn’t mean to tease. It never ceased to surprise her how close the edge was for some men or how they could bring themselves to the edge and retreat as Gereon had done. For a time, doing it to them made a reasonable living. 

Gereon nodded and closed his eyes with what looked like shame. “Not here. Not like this,” he whispered. He kissed her softly and brought his hand up to touch her face, to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, his gaze thoughtful. “Wo lebst du jetzt?” he asked. _Du._

“Moabit. In Spenerstraße. I can’t have you in. Birte, Toni—”

“Charlotte, I misspoke. I need to take you home and to see to myself tonight.” His thumb moved over her lips, then along the frame of her jaw, the motion gentle but achingly full of promise. 

Charlotte shivered, letting her head fill momentarily with the notion of Gereon easing for himself the tension between them, alone in bed, or in the bath. Men sometimes handled themselves so roughly. And always when there was shame. He had no shame in stating his intentions, at least with himself. Was Gereon’s shame that he was as close to the edge as schoolboy? Or that he wanted her when there was plainly someone else whose bed he shared and that had it been that way along? Charlotte resigned herself to the latter. “But you have someone,” she said quietly. Someone to ease him. She could have eased him: here, now. Hearing the words said aloud made her want to slump against him and be comforted, but she looked down into his face instead. His eyes were sad, heavy as ever, liquid with tears she knew he wouldn’t shed with her and perhaps not even elsewhere. Charlotte felt as hollow as she had in the hospital courtyard the morning she went to see him, only to find him leaving together with his family. It seemed a thousand years before that she’d mocked him at Holländer for saying that love was complicated.

“It’s…” He searched for words. He shook his head, then laid it on her shoulder, his face against her throat. “It’s not good. It’s over without ever having begun or ended.” He sighed. “Helga is my brother’s wife. And Moritz is his son. You make me want something else, Lotte.”

Charlotte knew the moves, actions, and words of men attempting to dance at two weddings at once. She’d known them all her life, and that Americans had an idiom about having and eating cake. Until this moment, she expected Gereon was doing the same, but there was neither wedding, nor cake. His admission cracked her heart open, unlocking mystery men rarely had and revealing one of the burdens that it was apparent weighed upon him. Taking him to her bed, or any bed, wouldn’t bring him peace. Nor would clandestine kisses that set them both alight. Charlotte had had the kiss she wanted, and it gave neither of them what they needed. “Just take me dancing, Gereon,” she whispered. It was enough. She kissed his forehead and stroked his head again. 

“When? Tomorrow evening?” he asked.

On Spenerstraße, they kissed again. 

***

In the late afternoon at the Ashinger in the Alex, accompanied by bread and butter and a small smoked trout fillet, Charlotte reviewed a case file and transposed interview notes. How much easier it would be for everyone and their notes if officers knew shorthand and dictation. How much easier if everyone spoke their mind like Reinhold. Charlotte met his eyes, her head tilted in exasperation at eggshells, at the transformation of her friend and colleague into a nervous biddy clutching at pearls, but rather it was a grey silk necktie with a pattern of lavender and burgundy. She watched him straighten it and blink. She knew what he’d seen the proceeding Sonnabend: she’d begun the evening by meeting Gereon at Tausend and ended it by walking with him as far as Wassertorstraße in the early morning. In between, they danced like demons, and shared an hour or more in an endless kiss that had them all but having each other on a banquette in a dark corner, heedless of onlookers. Gräf had been there too, buttoned up and quietly handsome together with Jost Diehl, a sweet looking young man who had just come to the Castle as a records clerk. Both Gräf and Jost had been wide-eyed and scandalized when Charlotte dismounted and righted her dress to walk to the bar, obtain a bottle of Sekt from Pauli the barmaid, and return to Gereon’s lap. 

_“What are you doing Lotte? Lotte, be careful. And if you’re not careful, for god’s sake, be more discreet. You’ll lose everything whether brass finds out or not. So will he.” Gräf’s frustration was palpable, and he’d cornered her in the queue for the ladies’ toilet where she’d gone to freshen up, and to powder her nose again._

_“He’s a man, Reini. He will never lose everything.”_

“I’m sorry for the things I said, Lotte,” Gräf said gently. He gestured at the empty chair and Charlotte nodded. 

Her smile came quickly as the air cleared. She watched him settle his awkward body into the chair. There was something different about him, less shambling. His hands fluttered less. Perhaps it was Jost. “I am too,” she said. 

“Rath is a good man, Lotte.” Gräf continued. “But be careful. His heart is on his sleeve like black arm band at a police funeral.”

Her smile broadened and she pushed her plate and the case file aside to lean forward and offer Gräf her full attention. “I’m not sure that I’m interested in his heart, Reini. I’m not that kind of girl.” She took his hand.

Gräf leaned forward too, his dark eyes alight to match his grin. “I’m sure that you’re a liar, Lotte. You always have been. Don’t play with fire. Rath doesn’t understand the kind of girl you are.”

The fun was gone and she sighed. “What are you getting at, Reini? Nutte? Halbseide? T-Girl? Table Girl? Minette?” Charlotte enumerated the strata of previous identities, some that paid better than typing and stenography. 

_Though regular work at Moka Efti had ended, Charlotte assumed she’d always be part of the Friday night trade at Kakadu or Café Braun, or Verona if she really needed the money, now that Weisse Maus was gone. At least until she was too old, and even then she could still be a boot girl or domina. Or until she married, or had someone on the regular to make ends meet since women’s police wages barely put food on the table. Someone like Gereon…the thought she wouldn’t allow, because it led to the kinds of fantasies she didn’t, as a matter of principle and pragmatism, have: courting, weddings, honeymoons, a vorderhaus flat with a new sprung bed, babies she didn’t want, maybe a dog._

“He knows, Reini.” Charlotte sighed, resigned, though Gereon had never questioned her, intimated, or insinuated, which was more than she could say for other men she’d stepped out with. “I’ve been whoring since I was fourteen, and I know that he knows. He believes in both kinds of women. The whore and the hausfrau.” 

Gräf squeezed her hand. “That’s not what I meant, Lotte. In Berlin, they are one in the same and all the women between. We’re all whores, Lotte. Some just admit to it and demand remuneration in exchange for labor. I mean to say that you’re the kind of girl a man can’t let go. And the kind of girl a man like me longs to be. It will tear Rath apart when he sees it.”

Lotte laughed suddenly at the disjointedness of the words Gräf had strung together. “That you long to be a table girl who knows shorthand? You could do. Or because I’ll break Gereon’s heart?”

Gräf offered a nod and a lopsided smile that was both sad and wistful. “More than that, Lotte,” he answered. “I shouldn’t tell you.”

Charlotte scanned the room for others from the Castle before she met Gräf’s eyes again. “He’s a trembler, Reini. I know. I’ve known for a long time. And I know how he manages it. I also know it’s worse than that. But he’s handsome, and a fine dancer, and I quite enjoy kissing him. I also enjoy talking to him. That’s what there is, and it’s enough for now.”

“A lamb come to slaughter, Lotte.” 

“Tell me about Jost, Reini. Make me happy for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Robert Görl's "Mit Dir" is nice for the middle third.
> 
> Gräf is my favorite. Don't tell the others. 
> 
> Continuing to play with real vs. 'verse. Tausend is real. Holländer is/was not. They inhabit the same literal space under an arch near Friedrichstraße, but are different in my head. As gorgeous as Tausend is IRL, it's a cocktail lounge rather than a kabarett or tanzhalle venue.
> 
> Gap fill and speculation sandboxes are the best kind. I'm still wondering if the twisted mirroring (dancing with Charlotte vs. Helga's fantasy of being danced with; not saving Anno but saving Charlotte; etc.) was intentional, and if we're going to continue to see it play out in the next season. Aber angst! (My German continues to be garbage...this language is such an onion.)


End file.
